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Tuesday, November 28, 2017

Trump's FCC chairman accuses Twitter of silencing conservatives

The head of the Federal Communications Commission is going on the offensive against tech companies in an effort to make his case for repealing net neutrality rules.

FCC chairman Ajit Pai on Tuesday accused Twitter (TWTR, Tech30) and other tech companies of being disingenuous by arguing for a free and open internet while they "routinely block or discriminate against content they don't like."

The remarks came as part of a speech on his recently revealed plan to unravel Obama-era net neutrality protections at a telecom policy event in Washington DC. The 2015 rules were intended to keep the internet open and fair by preventing broadband providers from playing favorites with online content.

Pai argued that it's actually the "edge providers," the FCC's term for services like Google(GOOGL, Tech30) and Facebook (FB, Tech30), that "are a much bigger actual threat to an open Internet than broadband providers, especially when it comes to discrimination on the basis of viewpoint."